The author of the term differential psychology. Differential psychology as a science
Differential psychology.
Tutorial.
Part 1
Vyboyshchik psychology: textbook. Part 1 - Chelyabinsk: SUSU Publishing House, 2006. - 61p.
INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………… ... 3
CHAPTER 1. DIFFERENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE ... ... ... ..... 4
The knowledge gained in the course will allow you to understand how the general patterns of the functioning of the psyche are manifested in specific people, to feel the uniqueness and versatility of individuality, to learn how to analyze and synthesize information about a person, as well as to provide qualified assistance to clients in the process of individual and group psychological counseling.
In addition, mastering the course can contribute to the professional growth of future psychologists by developing the ability to formulate problems, integrate information and transmit it from different areas of psychology.
The discipline is based on the courses "General Psychology", "Psychological Workshop", "Psychophysiology", "Higher Mathematics" and is the basis for a deeper study in the courses "Experimental Psychology", "Psychological Diagnostics", "Psychological Consulting", "Theory of Personality" ... When mastering the discipline, students can also use information from the courses "Developmental Psychology", "Social Psychology", "Clinical Psychology".
CHAPTER 1
DIFFERENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE
Subject, purpose and objectives.
Historical prerequisites for forming a separate science.
Status in the system of human sciences.
1.1 Subject and structure of differential psychology
In the most general terms, the term "differential" is interpreted as different, different in some attribute (attributes), or criterion, therefore, differential psychology can be defined as the science of differences between people. It is important to remember that this definition does not fully disclose the content of differential psychology and can be used only at the first stages of acquaintance with this discipline.
A deeper understanding of the content of differential psychology allows you to understand the definition of it subject, which in the modern interpretation is formulated as follows: study of the structure of personality based on identificationindividual, typological and group differencesbetween people by comparative analysis.
Based on the subject of study, differential psychology includes three sections, which are devoted to three types of differences: 1) individual, 2) group and 3) typological.
1. Individual differences. The section is devoted to the study of the manifestations of general psychological patterns at the level of an individual person. Individual differences can be conditionally divided into two groups: a) intra-individual and b) inter-individual. The specificity of these two groups is as follows.
Inside-individual differences imply:
Differences between a person and himself at different periods of life (for example, in childhood, youth and maturity; at the beginning of training and after its completion, etc.),
The difference between a person and himself in different situations and different social groups (for example, in a student group or in a family, in public transport or at a disco),
The ratio of various manifestations of personality, character, intelligence in an individual (for example, the ratio of verbal and non-verbal intelligence; the ratio of volitional and emotional personality traits).
Under inter-individual differences are understood:
Differences between an individual and most other people (correlation with the general psychological norm),
Differences between a person and a specific group of people (for example, a student or professional group).
2... Group differences. The section is devoted to the study of the differences between people, taking into account their belonging to a particular community, or group. We are talking about large groups that are distinguished according to the following criteria: gender, age, nationality (race), cultural tradition, social class, etc. Belonging to each of these groups is a natural manifestation of the nature of any person (as a biological and social being) and allows get a more complete picture of the features of his personality.
3. Typological differences. The section examines the differences between people, which are distinguished by psychological (in some cases - psychophysiological) criterion or criteria, such as, for example, features of temperament, character, personality. At the same time, people are united into certain groups - types. The selection of such groups is the result of attempts to classify information about the differences between people in order to explain and predict their behavior, as well as to determine the most adequate areas of application of their abilities. An example of the first typologies are classifications, the creators of which distinguished groups of people taking into account the date of birth and a number of corresponding natural criteria - the properties of stones and trees (horoscopes of the Druids), the arrangement of stars (astrological horoscopes). Modern typologies are based on other criteria; in their development, certain patterns are taken into account, which will be discussed below.
1.2 Historical background of design
differential psychology into a separate science
The term "Differential Psychology" was introduced by a German psychologist William Stern, who managed to collect the ideas about the differences between people available by that time (1911) into a holistic concept.
The background to the creation of the concept is primarily associated with the development of a number of empirical directions, which were distinguished by the use of observation method, a low level of generalization, as well as attempts to connect some anatomical, physiological and psychological characteristics of a person.
For example, within physiognomy, founded by J. Lavater, personality traits, facial expressions and even just the image of a person's silhouette served as the basis for predicting his behavior. Supporters phrenology, developed, sought to determine the characteristics of a person by the shape of the structure of the skull. Adherents graphology, which Abbot I. Michon was engaged in more than others, diagnosed the signs of individuality by writing letters, tilting, pressing and other characteristics of the exact movements of a person, reflected in his handwriting.
By the end of the 19th century, in connection with the introduction into psychology experimental method, the study of differences moves to a qualitatively new level, involving the measurement and subsequent analysis of individual and group characteristics. The key events of this period, which served as prerequisites for the formalization of differential psychology into a separate science, include the following:
1.psychological laboratory in 1879, where he began to study mental processes under experimental conditions. Very quickly after that, similar laboratories began to open in other countries of Europe and America.
2. Discovery of the reaction time phenomenon. Back in 1796, thanks to the imaginary oversight of Greenwich Observatory assistant Kinnibrook, reaction time was discovered as a psychological phenomenon (individual differences were found between observing astronomers in determining the location of a star). The explanation for the fact was given in 1816 FrederickBessel- differences in reaction time (the intersection of the star with the grid was given 0.5 seconds later). The publication in 1822 by Bessel of the results of his many years of observations of the motor reaction time of German astronomers can be considered the first scientific report on the study of the differential psychological aspects of human behavior.
Bessel was the main argument in favor of starting to consider the mental as a process with a temporal extent, with a beginning, middle and end, and not as a one-time phenomenon. Later, the Dutch researcher F. Donders developed a special scheme for calculating the reaction time, and an increase in the reaction time began to be perceived as an indicator of the complication of mental processes.
3.Using methods of statistical analysis. In 1869, a work was published in England Francis Galton(1869–1978) "Hereditary genius", in which the author interpreted the results of his statistical analysis of the biographical facts of prominent people, and also substantiated the hereditary determination of human abilities. Galton's work was influenced by evolutionary theory Charles Darwin.
F. Galton in 1884 organizes the first anthropometric laboratory within the framework of the International Exhibition in London. He conducts the first mass survey of people (9,337 subjects per year). Examines differences in constitutional (height, weight, body proportions), sensory (response time to visual and auditory stimuli, compression force), sensory (visual and hearing acuity) parameters. The result was the substantiation of statistical analysis methods and the development of new ideas.
4.Use of psychogenetic data- a field of psychology bordering on genetics, the subject of which is the origin of individual psychological characteristics of a person, the role of the environment and genotype in their formation. The most informative was the twin method, which was first used by Galton. This method allows you to maximally equalize the impact of the environment and differentiate differences depending on the source of their origin: genetic (passed down from generation to generation), congenital (meaningful only for relatives of one generation), acquired (associated with a difference in the environment).
1.3 The founders of differential psychology
and their ideas about the subject of new science
The first major representatives of differential psychology as a scientific direction, in addition to V. Stern, were in Europe - A. Binet and F. Galton, in America - D. Cattell, in Russia -. Individual and group tests (including tests of mental abilities) were used as the main research methods, a little later - projective methods for measuring attitudes and emotional reactions.
In 1895 A. Binet and W. Henry published an article entitled "The Psychology of Personality", which was the first systematic analysis of the goals, subject matter and methods of differential psychology. As the main problems of differential psychology, the authors of the article put forward two: 1) the study of the nature and degree of individual differences in psychological processes; 2) the discovery of the relationship of the mental processes of the individual, which can make it possible to classify qualities and the ability to determine which functions are the most fundamental.
In 1900, the first edition of V. Stern's book on differential psychology, "The Psychology of Individual Differences", appeared.
The first part of the book examines the essence, problems and methods of differential psychology. To the subject of this section of psychology, Stern attributed differences between individuals, racial and cultural differences, professional and social groups, as well as differences related to gender.
He characterized the fundamental problem of differential psychology as threefold:
What is the nature of the psychological life of individuals and groups, what is the degree of their differences;
What factors determine these differences or affect them (in this regard, V. Stern mentioned heredity, climate, social or cultural level, education, adaptation, etc.);
What are the differences, is it possible to fix them in the spelling of words, facial expressions, etc.
V. Stern also considered such concepts as "psychological type", "individuality", "norm" and "pathology". Using the methods of differential psychology, he evaluated introspection, objective observation, the use of materials from history and poetry, cultural research, quantitative testing and experiment.
The second part of the book contains a general analysis and some data regarding individual differences in the manifestation of a number of psychological qualities - from simple sensory abilities to more complex mental processes and emotional characteristics.
Sterna in a substantially revised form was republished in 1911, and again in 1921 under the title "Methodological Foundations of Differential Psychology".
In the final version of his concept, V. Stern expanded the definition of the subject of differential psychology, including in its content not only individual, but also group and typological differences. At the same time, the author emphasized the integrative nature of the new science and especially noted that the comprehensiveness inherent in differential psychology is of a completely different kind than in general psychology. It lies in the fact that differential psychological research is subject to formal(and not meaningful) signs of a person. That is, such signs that:
Characterize the structure of personality,
They are distinguished by their versatility and stability,
They can be reproduced both in real life and in an experimental situation.
1.4 The purpose and objectives of differential psychology
The goal and objectives of differential psychology are determined on the basis of several theoretical positions that are shared not only by the founders, but also by modern representatives of this direction.
1. The universality of differences. Differences (within - and between - individual) are an essential feature of human behavior, as well as the behavior of all living organisms, including humans. Charles Darwin wrote about this (1859).
2. The need for measurement when examining differences. The study of individual differences by definition is associated with measurement and quantification (D. Cattell, 1890).
3. Stability of the studied characteristics. Differential psychology studies the characteristics that are most stable over time and in different situations.
4. Determination of behavior. By comparing differences in behavior with other known accompanying phenomena, it is possible to identify the relative contribution of various factors to the development of behavior (A. Anastazi, 1937).
5. The relationship and complementarity of the general and the special when studying the differences. On the one hand, differences manifest the operation of the most general laws of human behavior. On the other hand, “the concrete manifestation of any general law of psychology always includes the factor of individuality” (1985).
The latter principle is of particular importance for differential psychology as an integrative scientific discipline and implies a combination of two approaches in the study of differences between people - nomothetic and ideographic.
The purpose of the first approach is to study general patterns and their variations is the main task of traditional experimental research. The name itself comes from the Greek word "nomos" meaning "law" ("nomo-teteo" - to establish laws).
The Greek word "idios", from which the name of the second approach comes, means "peculiar", "belonging to someone." Accordingly, the purpose of this approach is to describe the characteristics of a particular person.
According to the concept of W. Stern (1911), the ideographic approach not only allows one to study the layer of psychological reality that is inaccessible to the nomothetic approach, but also deepens the understanding of the general laws of the functioning and development of the psyche. The nomothetic approach creates the basis for ideographic analysis and defines the reference points needed for a deeper study of individuality. The principle of complementarity of these two approaches opens up a new opportunity for researchers - withdrawgeneral psychological patterns, without losing the individual characteristics of a person and his integrity .
Based on the listed principles purpose differential psychology in the modern interpretation is defined as “ study of the mechanisms of development and functioning of the human individuality as an integral phenomenon that exists in the field of interaction of subjective and objective realities» .
The implementation of the goal is carried out by solving the following main tasks:
Investigation of the relationships between the measured characteristics that characterize the personality traits;
Analysis of the group distribution of features;
Exploring the sources of differences among the measured characteristics;
Development of theoretical foundations for psychodiagnostic research and correctional programs.
1.5 Status of differential psychology
Status characterizes the boundaries of differential psychology, its many connections with other sciences of man.
presented these connections in the form of a diagram shown in Figure 1.
External status
Fig. 1. Differential psychology status
As you can see from the picture, external status differential psychology is defined by boundaries that run from the physics of sensory systems, through genetics and physiology (lower boundaries), to personality psychology, social, as well as general and developmental psychology (upper boundaries).
Internal status is determined by the sphere of borderline areas of psychological knowledge, which were formed as a result of highlighting the differential psychological aspect in them: developmental psychology and psychology of gender, social psychology of personality (analysis of the interaction of a group and an individual), general psychology of personality (structure and mechanisms of personal properties), differential psychophysiology, psychogenetics (models for the determination of human differences), psychophysics.
In general, it can be argued that differential psychology plays the role of a connecting link between general psychology and all of the above areas in the science of man. In this case, the central area of mutual intersection is the psychology of the individual. As he writes, “the intermediate position of differential psychology - and the psychology of personality as its central part - is due to the laws of human phylogenesis and ontogenesis. In the first case (phylogeny), we mean the movement of the psyche as a self-developing phenomenon from evolutionary-genetic (biological) laws to socio-cultural (social) laws. In the second (ontogeny) - the transformation in the course of the life path of the biologically determined properties of an individual into personality structures, which are manifested in the integral characteristics of the interaction of an individual with the world. "
From the point of view of practical application, the connection between differential psychology and psychological diagnostics is of great importance. As V. Stern wrote, when a new concept is born (for example, "character accentuation", "style of behavior"), this process is carried out in the bosom of differential psychology. When a test is created to diagnose the corresponding characteristics of a person, the task of the relay is transferred to specialists in the field of psychodiagnostics and differential psychometrics.
1.6 The problem of independence of differential psychology
Numerous connections of differential psychology with other human sciences give grounds for doubts, expressed by a number of researchers, regarding its right to be called an independent science.
For example, Anna Anastasi(1958), considers differential psychology, rather, not as a separate area of knowledge, but as an approach that is relevant for any psychological research: “The main goal of differential psychology, as well as psychology in general, is to understand behavior. Differential psychology approaches this problem through a comparative analysis of behavior in changing conditions. "
Taking into account the controversy on this issue, one should take into account the point of view of W. Stern, who believed that "differential psychology will not lose its truly scientific and independent character if it takes part in solving problems in other branches of psychology" (1911).
The following arguments can be made in favor of V. Stern's position. On the one hand, the differential approach is really important for solving many problems of psychology, on the other hand, the specificity of this approach can serve as a basis for recognizing differential psychology as an independent science for the following reasons.
First, this approach is a methodological basis for studying the subject of differential psychology, which, with the development of science, acquired a clear, specific content - an analysis of the structure of individuality (taking into account differences at different levels). Thanks to the systematic study of the structure of individuality, psychology has been enriched with a number of unique concepts, such as the theory of integral individuality (1975–1986), an integrated approach (1976), and the special theory of individuality (1988–1991).
Secondly, it is in the differential psychological approach that the principle of combining the general and the particular is laid, in which significant and equal importance is attached to the general laws and individual manifestations of the mental. This principle allows us to reduce the distance between the results of scientific research and their practical application. In addition, this principle promotes awareness of the value of any individual, regardless of its specific characteristics, which is of fundamental importance for the professional position of every psychologist.
CHAPTER 2
PROBLEMS AND METHODS OF STUDYING INDIVIDUALITY
Systems approach in differential psychology.
The role of heredity and environment in the formation of differences.
Differential psychology methods.
The concept of psychological norm and psychological type.
2.1 Systems approach in differential psychology
In differential psychology, the study of individuality is carried out on the basis of a systems approach, which is the methodological basis of numerous studies in various fields of modern science.
Concept "system" defined as a set of elements that are in relationships and connections with each other, which form a certain unity... The general characteristics of any system are the following:
1. Integrity- irreducibility of any system to the sum of its constituent parts and non-deducibility from any part of the system of its properties as a whole.
2.Structurality- connections and relationships of system elements are ordered into a certain structure, which determines the behavior of the system as a whole.
3. Relationship with the environment, which can be “closed” (not changing the environment and the system) or “open” (transforming the environment and the system) character.
4. Hierarchy. Each component of the system can be considered as a system, which includes another system, that is, each component of the system can simultaneously be an element (subsystem) of this system, and itself include another system.
5. The plurality of descriptions. Each system, being a complex object, in principle cannot be reduced to only one picture, one display. For a complete description of the system, this presupposes the coexistence of a plurality of its mappings.
All of the listed characteristics are directly related to the human individuality and are taken into account when selecting specific methods for studying it.
Within the framework of the systems approach, in studies of the structure of individuality, four dimensions are taken into account, which correspond to four hierarchical levels: 1) bodily (organism), 2) individual (general mental characteristics), 3) personal, and 4) integral (holistic individuality).
Level organism involves the study of the physical and physiological properties of a person, such as physique, biochemical characteristics, neurodynamic properties of the brain, as well as features of functional asymmetry.
At the level individual the features of mental processes and temperament are considered, taking into account biological (gender, age, race) and social differences (cultural and professional identification, socio-economic status).
TO personal the level includes features that are formed in the process of interaction of the individual with the social environment (psychosocial properties).
Integrative the level unites all the previous and properties and allows you to present individuality as a unique, holistic phenomenon - an integral of all levels of internal and external interaction, which includes the processes of integration and differentiation.
2.2 The role of heredity and environment in the formation of differences
As noted above, the relationship with the external environment is one of the essential characteristics of an individual as an integral system. In addition, the environment, along with hereditary prerequisites, creates conditions for the formation of differences between people.
For a deeper understanding of the role of heredity and the environment, it is important to consider modern ideas about these concepts.
According to the traditional view presented in the textbook by A. Anastazi (1958), heredity consists of the totality of all genes that are passed on to the individual by both parents during conception. Each individual gets a unique combination of genes, with the exception of identical twins.
Under environment all the stimuli to which the body reacts are understood: from the intracellular and intercellular environment within the body itself to large-scale external influences that it encounters from its conception to its death.
Heredity and environment include a large number of different factors interacting with each other in a complex complex that operates throughout the life of an individual. During this interaction heredity b determines the stability of the existence of the individual and the boundaries within which he can develop. Wednesday provides variability and the ability to adapt to changing living conditions.
When considering the role of heredity and the environment in the formation of differences, it is necessary to take into account a number of more particular provisions related to the content of these two factors.
1. The simple physical presence of objects does not mean that we attribute them to the environment: it is necessary that the object serve as a stimulus for the individual, to influence him. Thus, the environment for two individuals will always be different, even if they are placed in the same conditions.
2. Not everything that is present at birth is hereditary, since the prenatal environment can influence the basic characteristics of the organism.
3. Traces of environmental influences can be very stable in the psychological appearance of an individual, although they will not be genetically transmitted to subsequent generations (for example, developmental disorders of a child as a result of birth trauma).
4. Achievements of parents cannot be passed on to children through genetic inheritance, while social inheritance plays an important role, which means following cultural patterns (transfer of accentuation, for example, schizoid, from mother to child through cold mothering, formation of family scenarios).
5. Heredity affects what can manifest itself long after birth under appropriate environmental conditions. If such conditions do not arise, heredity may not manifest. Thus, it would be a mistake to believe that inherited qualities cannot be influenced. Although heredity is responsible for the stability of a species, most inherited traits are modifiable, and even hereditary diseases are not inevitable.
6. Similarity to parents can be influenced by both heredity and environment. Differences between parents and children can also be the result of each of the factors.
7. If you ask the question to what extent intellectual or personal qualities depend on heredity, and how much on the environment, then it will turn out to be meaningless, since there are as many answers to it as there are individuals. It is necessary to change the wording of the question and ask not how much, but how this influence is realized, that is, what is the measure and content of these influences.
A similar task is set by the authors of integrative models of individuality (, etc.). According to the unanimous opinion of these authors, man is both a representative of a biological species with a long evolutionary history and a member of society, which is the result of historical development. Therefore, considering the structure of psychological properties, it is fundamentally important to take into account the fact of the interaction of biological and social factors, as well as their complex influence on the formation of individuality.
8. As differential psychology develops, the content of the concepts of "heredity" and "environment" is clarified. So, lately heredity began to be understood more broadly. These are not just individual signs that affect behavior (for example, properties of the nervous system), but also congenital behavior programs, including social. Programs differ from signs replacing each other under the influence of the environment in that in this case the trajectory of development is anticipated; the program contains both the time of its "launch" and the sequence of critical points.
Concept Wednesday has changed too. It is not simply a series of stimuli to which an individual responds throughout life (from air and food to educational conditions and the attitude of companions). This is a system of interactions between man and the world, in which man, as his individuality develops, gradually acquires a leading role.
As an illustration to the last statement, we can cite the orthogenetic concept of H. Werner (orthogenesis is the theory of the development of living nature). According to this concept, all organisms are born with functions (including mental ones) fixed at the lowest point of their development. Interacting with the environment, they acquire new experience, which, in turn, is fixed in new functional structures that again determine the minimum of interaction, but already of a new quality.
X. Werner compared an organism to an actor on stage: in the course of development, there is a shift from stage to actor. The higher the stage, the more often the initiative comes from the individual, who becomes more and more active, beginning to manipulate the environment, and not just passively respond to it.
2.3 Methods of differential psychology
2.3.1 Classification of methods
Method translated from Greek means "the way of knowledge." To study (cognize) the structure of personality, various methods are used, which can be classified, for example, as follows.
a branch of psychology that studies individual psychological differences between individuals and between groups of people, as well as the causes and consequences of these differences. The term was introduced in 1900 by V. Stern.
The object of study can be both specific individuals and various groups - social, class, ethnic, age. Most often, the focus of the study is the personality and intellectual characteristics of the individual, correlated with neurophysiological factors.
The prerequisite for its appearance is the introduction of experiment into psychology, as well as psychogenetic and mathematical methods. Differential psychology developed under the direct influence of practice - pedagogical, medical and engineering. The beginning of its development was laid by F. Galton, who created a number of methods and devices for studying individual differences and for their statistical analysis (-> statistical method). The first major representatives of this trend were A. Binet, A. F. Lazursky, J. Cattell and others.
The main method of differential psychology has become tests (=> testing) - first individual, then group - used to determine mental differences, and with the invention of projective tests - to measure interests, attitudes, emotional reactions. By processing the tests with the methods of factorial analysis, factors are identified that signal the general properties of intelligence or personality. On their basis, quantitative variations in the psychological properties of individuals are determined.
In foreign psychology, the most famous are:
1) the theory of two factors by Charles Spearman - according to which, in each type of activity, both a factor common to any of them and a specific one, necessary only for a given type of activity, are manifested;
2) multifactorial theories - denying the common factor and believing that there is a wide range of primary mental abilities (speed of perception, associative memory, etc.).
However, no matter how improved the tests and their processing, they by themselves are not able to explain the reasons for psychological differences. The question of these reasons for the entire history of differential psychology has been sharply controversial.
For a long time, foreign differential psychology was dominated by the belief in the biological predetermination of a person's abilities and character. In this case, decisive importance was attributed to heredity and the maturation of the organism, and the dependence of individual psychological characteristics on the lifestyle of the individual, socio-economic and cultural conditions of its development was not taken into account.
Nowadays, differential psychology is characterized by the intensive development of new approaches and methods, both experimental and mathematical. Along with the mental differences between individuals, differences in creative and organizational abilities, the general structure of the personality, and the sphere of motivation are widely studied. An important place is given to identifying correlations (-> correlation analysis) between psychological properties - on the one hand, and physiological and biochemical - on the other. Domestic scientists are also doing a lot. The facts and conclusions obtained by differential psychology are important for solving many practical problems: selection and training of personnel, diagnostics and prognosis of the development of individual properties, inclinations, abilities of individuals, etc.
DIFFERENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY
(English differential psychology) is a branch of psychology that studies individual psychological differences between people. The term D. p. Was introduced by him. the psychologist V. Stern (1900). D. p. Studies both the psychological differences of specific individuals and the typological differences in psychological manifestations in representatives of different social, class, ethnic, age, and other groups. Comparative research is most often subject to the personal and intellectual characteristics of an individual, studied in an experiment, determined by observation, tests or analysis of the results of self-observation. One of the important tasks of modern psychology, which was previously often limited to a description of the nature and range of individual psychological manifestations, is to identify the most essential parameters of the organization of mental activity (measurements, factors), on which the individual typological characteristics of the subject depend. To understand the causes and conditions for the emergence of individual psychological differences, it is important to study their neurophysiological factors in the form of basic properties of n. With; this study is now being carried out within the framework of differential psychophysiology, which arose thanks to the works of B.M. Teplov and his collaborators (see V.D. Nebylitsyn) on the basis of the concept of types and properties of N. With. I.P. Pavlova.
Modern mathematical theory makes extensive use of a well-developed mathematical and statistical apparatus, including methods of correlation, regression, discriminant, and factor analysis. The data of D. p. Are of great applied importance for the practice of teaching, upbringing, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic influences, determination of professional suitability, professional selection and vocational guidance.
Differential psychology
differential psychology) D. p. studies the nature and origins of individual and group differences in behavior. The measurement of such differences has generated a huge amount of descriptive data, which in themselves represent a large scientific and practical. interest. It is more important, however, that dialectical theory is a unique way to understand behavior, for the approach that distinguishes it consists in the comparative analysis of behavior under different biologists. and environmental conditions. By correlating observed behavioral differences with known concomitant circumstances, one can study the relative contributions of different variables to the development of behavior. As an independent area of psychology. of science, dialectical education began to take shape in the last quarter of the 19th century. Great contribution to issled. individual differences were introduced by Francis Galton by creating tests to measure sensorimotor and other simple functions, collecting extensive data in a variety of testing conditions and developing statistical methods for analyzing this kind of data. American psychologist James McKean Cattell, a student of Wilhelm Wundt, continued the development begun by Galton. tests and applied a differential approach in experimental psychology, which began to take shape in an independent field of psychology. Sciences. The first systematic description of the goals, areas of interest and methods of the psychology of individual differences - the article by Alfred Binet and Victor Henri "Individual Psychology" (La psychologic individuelle) - appeared in 1895. A more complete disclosure of relevant topics and a summary of the data accumulated by this time was made in the work of William Stern, published in 1900. The term differential psychology, which first appeared as a subtitle of his book, later, when it was republished, was included in the title, which sounded like "Methodological foundations of differential psychology" (Die differentielle psychologie in ihren methodischen grundlagen) ... Further progress in the study of individual and group differences is closely related to the development of psychology. testing, as well as with advances in related fields, especially in genetics, developmental psychology and cross-cultural psychology, which have made a significant contribution to the development of methodology, the accumulation of facts and the development of concepts of D. p. Range and distribution of individual differences Individual differences in behavioral characteristics are inherent in not only to people, but also to all representatives of the animal world. The results of studying the behavior of various animals - from single-celled organisms to great apes - indicate that different individuals differ significantly from each other both in their ability to learn and in terms of motivation, emotionality and other measurable features. These differences are so great that a partial overlap of the distributions of individual results is observed even when comparing widely spaced biologists. species. Although popular descriptions often place people in clearly distinguishable categories, eg. divide them into quick-witted and dumb, excitable and calm, the actual dimension of any psychol. traits exhibit strong variation in individuals along a continuous scale. Measurement distributions of most traits approach a bell-shaped normal probability distribution curve, with the greatest accumulation of cases near the center of the variation range and a gradual decrease in the number of cases as we approach its edges. First derived by mathematicians in their issled. according to the theory of probability, a normal curve is obtained whenever a larger number of independent and equally weighted factors act on the measured variable. Due to the huge number of hereditary and environmental factors that contribute to the development of most psychology. trait, the normal curve is generally recognized as the most appropriate model for the distribution of traits, and psychol. tests are usually so designed to fit this model. Heredity and environment Concepts The origins of individual differences in behavioral characteristics must be sought in the myriad interactions of heredity and environment throughout a person's life. The heredity of each person. consists of genes obtained from both parents at the time of conception. Genes are compounds of complex chemicals. substances transmitted by inheritance in the chromosomes of the egg and sperm, cat. combine to form a new organism. If in one of these genes there is a chemical. failure or imbalance, the result may be the appearance of a defective organism with physical pathology and profound mental retardation (as in the case of phenylketonuria). However, with the exception of such pathological cases, heredity sets broad limits for the development of behavior, and these limits in people. much wider than that of the species lower on the evolutionary ladder. What exactly will people achieve? within the limits allotted to him - depends on the environment in which he lives. The environment is the entire set of stimuli that affect the individual from the moment of conception to death, from air and food to the intellectual and emotional climate in the family and the immediate environment, as well as the beliefs and attitudes of those with whom the individual closely communicates. Environmental factors begin to take effect even before the birth of an individual. Malnutrition, toxic substances and other prenatal environmental factors have a profound effect on both physical and mental development, and the consequences of this influence affect over a long period of time. Terms such as inborn, innate and congenital are often misused by those who adhere to the wrong t.sp., As if everything that an individual is born with is inherited from his parents ... The second common misconception is the confusion between hereditary and organic conditions. For example, with regard to mental retardation, which is a consequence of brain damage in the early stages of development, it is quite possible to say that it is not hereditary, but organic in origin. Methodology Numerous methods used to study the influence of heredity and environment on the development of behavior can be divided into 3 groups in accordance with three main approaches: selective breeding, experiential control and statistical studies of family similarity. resemblances). Selective withdrawal to obtain specific behavioral characteristics has been successfully applied to several. biologist. types. Thus, it was proved that it is possible to deduce from one initial group of two strains of rats that learn well and badly to pass the maze (ie, relatively speaking, "smart" and "dumb", respectively). However, these lines did not differ from each other in terms of general learning ability, since it turned out that both "smart" and "dumb" rats coped equally well with other learning tasks. Another issled. these specially bred lines provided us with a clear example of the interaction of heredity and environment. When rats were raised under restrictive conditions, individuals from both strains learned to navigate the maze as poorly as genetically "dumb" rats raised in the wild. In contrast, the enriched environment, which provided a variety of stimuli and opportunities for locomotor activity, improved the learning of individuals from the "dumb" line, and both groups now passed the maze at about the level of achievement of "smart" rats in a natural setting. Subsequently, selective breeding experiments were extended to other species as well as other types of behavior. Of particular importance was the development of methods for determining individual differences in the behavior of organisms such as the fruit flies of Drosophilae. This made it possible to derive considerable benefits from the mass of available genetic information about the morphology of Drosophila, as well as from such important advantages of fruit flies as the rapid change of generations and numerous offspring. As a result, two lines of fruit flies were derived: Drosophila, which flew into the light, and Drosophila, which flew away from the light source. A second approach to the study of heredity and environment deals with the behavioral effects of systematic, controlled changes in experience. Experimental issled. this issue is associated either with special training, or with blocking the normal execution of a particular function. This method has often been used in animal experiments to study a wide range of behaviors, from swimming tadpoles and birdsong to sexual behavior and caring for offspring. Significant effects of such controlled manipulation of experience have been found for almost all types of behavior, incl. perceptual, motor, emotional and social. reactions, as well as learning. Thanks to such experiments, it was possible to establish that actions, which were previously considered exclusively "instinctive", do not require any learning, for example. nest building and grooming of pups by rats is dependent on previous animal experience. Even when the animal does not have the opportunity to learn some specific action of interest to the researcher, its behavior can be influenced by the performance of other related functions. When conducting research. on infants and young children in one group of experiments, the method of co-twin control was used, the essence of which is that one of two identical twins is actively taught something, for example. climb the stairs, and the second plays the role of a "control group". Most of the results indicate that if learning is started at a time when the child is physically ready for it, he will progress faster than in cases where learning started prematurely. In other research. compared children brought up in a limited environment, for example. in orphanages; and children growing up in more stimulating environments. It was found that the striking differences between them depended on the volume of communication with adults, the degree of physical. stimulation and the availability of opportunities for physical activity. There is, however, evidence that appropriate educational programs, especially if children are introduced to them at an early age, can neutralize the negative impact of such an impoverished environment on intellectual development. The third main approach is based on statistical analysis of family similarities. The degree of similarity in the performance of aptitude tests and personality tests by parents and children, siblings, and also monozygous and dizygotic twins was investigated. In general, the closer the hereditary relationship, the more similar the test scores are. On most intelligence tests, for example, the correlations of monozygotic twins approach 0.90, nearly as high as the correlations between primary and secondary testing of the same individuals. Dizygotic twins' correlations cluster around 0.70 and sibling correlations around 0.50, just like parent-child correlations. It should be noted, however, that the family is not only a biologist, but also a cultural community. In general, the more closely two people are related by family ties, the more similar will be their living conditions and the degree of their influence on each other. Special issled. foster children and identical twins raised separately, allow for a separate assessment of the contributions of heredity and environment, but the lack of control of some conditions in them does not allow making final conclusions. The Nature of Intelligence Structure Intelligence was most often identified with intelligence quotient - IQ, obtained on a standardized intelligence test. Such tests reflect - at least in part - the concept of intelligence prevailing in the culture in which they are developed. The beginning of modern intelligence testing was laid by Alfred Binet, who developed a test for identifying mentally retarded children among schoolchildren. The criteria for validating intelligence tests were often academic criteria such as grades, teachers' intelligence ratings, transfer and final exam data, and educational attainment. In terms of content, most intelligence tests are predominantly verbal, with varying degrees of coverage of arithmetic skills and quantitative reasoning. However, different intelligence tests can selectively assess slightly different combinations of abilities. Non-verbal and action tests, for example, often place higher demands on the handling of spatial representations, on the speed and accuracy of perception, and on non-verbal reasoning than conventional verbal tests. As the involvement of psychologists in career counseling and recruiting for various organizations has increased, there has been a realization of the need for additional tests to measure abilities that are not covered by traditional intelligence tests. As a result, the so-called tests of special abilities were developed for the selection of people capable of working as clerks, mechanics, as well as those who have other abilities that are useful with t. Sp. a number of specialties. At the same time, fundamental research was carried out. nature of intelligence by methods of factor analysis. Essentially, these methods consist in the statistical analysis of intercorrelations between test indicators in order to determine the smallest number of independent factors that can explain the intercorrelation data. Abilities, or factors identified in this way, include verbal comprehension, fluency, arithmetic skills, quantitative reasoning, perceptual speed, spatial imaging, and mechanical understanding. The functions themselves, measured by intelligence tests, by means of factor analysis were divided into relatively independent verbal and numerical abilities. These abilities - combined with those that underlie special ability tests - now provide a more complete picture of people. abilities. Some of these are included in what are commonly referred to as complex ability batteries. On the other hand, the steadily growing array of data from cross-cultural studies. indicates that in different cultures, intelligence can be understood as different qualities of people. Both the qualities that make up intelligence and the relative level of development of these qualities reflect the requirements and conditional reinforcements from the culture, in a swarm of people. is functioning. Conducted in modern preliterate cultures issled. show that those representatives of these cultures who have experienced a noticeable influence of European education are more inclined to respond to test tasks based on abstract concepts, and are less dependent on context than their peers who received a traditional upbringing. From a cross-cultural perspective, the currently available intelligence tests can be most correctly described as measuring academic intelligence or learning ability. These skills and abilities represent only a limited part of the intellect, but that part of it, which is widely used and is extremely in demand in modern, industrially developed societies. In such societies, academic intelligence significantly correlates not only with studies. achievements, but also with achievements in most professions and in other important spheres of social activity. The intellectual functions revealed by traditional intelligence tests were also studied by cognitive psychologists in the framework of the study of information processing processes and machine modeling of human thinking. Although these issled. are only in the early stages, they contribute to understanding what intelligence tests measure, because their focus is on the problem-solving process itself, not its final result. What does the test taker do when answering the test questions? By analyzing the performance of a predictive test with t. Sp. compound elementary processes can ultimately help to identify the sources of strengths and weaknesses of the intelligence of each person. Such analysis can enhance the diagnostic function of tests and facilitate the development of individual training programs that meet the needs of a particular person. Development throughout life Longitudinal research. Age-related changes in the level of performance of traditional intelligence tests reveal its slow increase in infancy, followed by faster progress in childhood, continuing until maturity, when a gradual decline in indicators begins. It should be noted, however, that at different stages of human development. the level of his intelligence is assessed according to a different set of properties: the IQ of infants is determined mainly by the level of their sensorimotor development, and the IQ of children is determined by the level of development of verbal and other abstract functions. During the period of compulsory schooling, the content of intelligence tests closely mirrors what is taught in schools. In the future, situations are possible in which the changing patterns of an individual's intellectual development, associated with an increase in educational level and the acquisition of a certain specialty, are not detected using widely used intelligence tests: this may require a wider range of tests and other assessment procedures. The average performance of traditional intelligence tests shows a continuous increase with age up to the third decade of life. Among the groups with high test scores, this primarily applies to college graduates and people engaged in mental work, such an increase can occur throughout life. In the samples of persons whose indicators are close to the average for the population, a tendency towards a decrease in the tested abilities is manifested after they reach the age of 30, and the greatest decline is noted when performing tasks on speed, visual perception and the establishment of abstract spatial relationships. In issled. Cross-sectional sampling, which uses different samples at different age levels, age differences are likely to be confused with cultural changes in the population, as different age groups also differ in educational level and other changing living conditions. Well-designed longitudinal studies adults show that the decline in intelligence test scores attributed to age is significantly less than the differences that are associated with educational and cultural changes occurring over time. Intellectual deviants Mentally retarded and gifted people represent the lower and upper edges of the distribution of intelligence. Since this distribution is continuous, there are no clear boundaries between these groups and the statistical norm. On the basis of the performance of an intelligence test, mental retardation is usually equated with an IQ below 70, represented by approximately 2-3% of the total population. Decisions about the final diagnosis and possible treatment for each specific case are based not only on the IQ value, but on a comprehensive study of the intellectual development of the individual, the history of his training, social. competence, physical conditions and situations in the family. Although few rare forms of mental retardation are due to defective genes, the vast majority of cases are caused by exposure to environmental conditions before or after birth that have adverse physical effects. and psychol. influence. The intellectually gifted people located at the opposite pole of the scale were studied using various procedures and from various so-called. One major longitudinal study. was performed at Stanford University by Lewis M. Theremin and his colleagues. In this issled. 1000 children took part, whose IQ on the Stanford-Binet scale was at least 140; children were carefully examined, and further examination was carried out at several stages of life. A little more than 1% of the population has such a high IQ. The results of the Stanford study, confirmed by the work of other scientists, showed that a gifted child, as a rule, successfully studies at school, is healthy, emotionally stable and has a variety of interests. As they reach maturity, these children generally retain their superiority in adult pursuits. Thanks to issled. giftedness, the concept of intelligence has been expanded to include a range of creative abilities, in particular, ideational fluency and originality. It has been established that motivation, interests, and other personal variables, as well as psychology, play an important role in creative achievements. the climate of the environment in which an individual grew up and in a cut he, having become an adult, works. Group differences Sex differences The study of any group differences in behavioral characteristics poses a problem. a number of problems associated with both the methodology and the interpretation of the results obtained. In group comparisons, the individual differences within each group were found to be much larger than the mean differences between groups. The distributions of the various groups overlap to a large extent. Even when there are large, statistically significant differences between the averages of the two groups, there are always people in the low-performing group who outperform those in the high-performing group in terms of their performance. It follows from this that the group belonging of an individual cannot serve as a reliable indicator of his position in the distribution of psychology. crap. The second problem arises in connection with the use of non-representative samples, in which the sample factors could act differently in the studied populations. For example, since, as practice shows, boys drop out of school more often than girls, a comparison of the IQ scores of high school and high school students will show a difference in average in favor of boys. However, this difference would most likely disappear if we could include in the group of boys those who dropped out of school, as their scores tend to cluster around the lower end of the distribution. An interpretation error, similar in meaning, but opposite in direction, is illustrated by data from examinations of mentally retarded persons placed in hospitals, among whom, according to published reports, there are generally more men. While these findings were initially taken as evidence that men were more mentally retarded than women, the findings were later traced back to selective admission policies. Due to various social. and for economic reasons, mentally retarded women are more likely to remain in the community than men of the same intellectual level. The use of summary indicators for intelligence tests in group comparisons can lead to incorrect conclusions. When developing a number of tests, such as the Stanford-Binet scale, sex differences were eliminated by discarding or balancing tasks that were easier for males or females to complete. Even when test designers did not adhere to this practice in selecting items, the heterogeneous test score may mask existing group differences in special ability. Reviews of psychol. tests showed significant differences in the average indicators between the sexes for a number of abilities and personality traits. Women as a group are superior to men in finger dexterity, speed and accuracy of perception, fluency of speech, as well as in performing other tasks related to mechanics of language and mechanical memory for various kinds of content. Men are superior to women in speed and coordination of gross bodily movements, spatial orientation, understanding of mechanical laws and mat. reasoning. Among the differences in personality traits, one of the most convincingly proven differences is the great aggressiveness of the males. This difference appears at an early age and is found across all cultural groups. It has also been found in animals, primarily in apes and most other mammals. In a number of issled. reported a stronger need for achievement in males, but later it was proved that this difference depends on the conditions in which the motivation for achievement is assessed: it is possible that the results partly reflect the extent to which the conditions are problematic. or subject-oriented. There is strong evidence for more social. orientation of women and their greater need for social. approval; women are also less confident than men and show higher levels of anxiety in different situations. Most issled. sex differences provide us only with descriptive data about the differences existing within the framework of a given culture. Their origins must be sought in the complex interactions of the biologist. and cultural factors. With a biologist. t. sp., various roles, to-rye men and women perform in the reproductive function, certainly contribute to sexual differentiation of psychol. development. The maternal functions assigned by nature to a woman, including the long period of bearing and feeding an infant, have a huge impact on gender differences in interests, attitudes, emotional traits, professional goals and achievements. Sexual differences in aggressiveness are associated with large body size, greater muscle strength and physical. endurance of men. There is also strong experimental evidence linking aggressive behavior with sex hormone levels. Dr. an important gender difference can be found in the acceleration of age development in girls. Girls not only reach puberty earlier than boys, but throughout childhood they are in all physical. characteristics are closer to their adult physique. In infancy, the acceleration of age development in girls may be an important factor in faster language acquisition and may give them an advantage in verbal development in general. It is not difficult to illustrate the contribution of culture to sex differences. In most societies, boys and girls, although they live in the same house, actually grow up in different subcultures. And parents, and other adults, and peers - all in many. cases treat them differently. The personalities of the mother and father themselves have a great influence on the formation of the child's ideas about gender roles and about what a particular culture expects of men and women. It is highly likely that gender-role stereotypes affect the gender differentiation of motivation, interests, and attitudes. There is some evidence that the performance of cognitive tasks, such as solving problems and tests of achievement in reading and arithmetic, is significantly associated with the degree of gender-role identification of an individual and his own assessment of the acceptability of various activities for his gender. Most of the descriptive data regarding sex differences in psychol. features, was collected in the United States and Western European countries before the beginning of the present. feminist movement. Changes in the educational, professional and social spheres influenced by this movement can affect the relative development of males and females, both in the cognitive field and in other areas. Racial and Cultural Differences Race is a biologist. a concept related to subdivisions of a species. It corresponds to such classifications as breed, tribe or line in animals. Human races are formed when a group of people becomes relatively isolated due to the action of geographic or social. barriers, as a result of which mating within a group becomes more frequent than mating of group members with "outsiders". Many generations have to change before the beginning of the so-called. the process will lead to the formation of populations that differ in the relative frequency of certain genes. However, since these differences are relative, not absolute, any racial group exhibits some variation in hereditary racial characteristics and overlaps with other populations in such characteristics. For this reason, the concept of race, in the strict sense of the word, applies to populations and does not apply to individuals. When people are classified into categories such as socioeconomic level, nationality, or ethnic identity, significant group differences are often found in parenting practices, sexual behavior, emotional responses, interests and attitudes, and in many aptitude tests. In all such comparisons, the direction and degree of difference between groups depends on the particular trait of interest to the researchers. Since each culture (or subculture) encourages the development of its own typical pattern of abilities and personality traits, comparisons based on global measures such as IQ or general emotional adaptation are practical. are meaningless. Isolation of groups leads to both cultural and racial differentiation. Hence, it is difficult to separately assess the biologist's contribution. and cultural factors in racial differences according to psychol. features. In search of an answer to this question, they test "half-breeds", children from mixed marriages. It was believed that if, due to genetic factors, one race is more intelligent than another, the intellectual abilities of the "half-breed" should be intermediate. However, the general consensus is that this hypothesis is highly questionable, since it suggests an absolute link between genes that determine skin color (or other racial traits) and genes that determine intelligence. With an incomplete connection, the correlation between racial characteristics and intelligence will disappear after a few. generations if mixed marriages continue. Interpretation of the results is further complicated by the fact that the mixing of races is usually chosen within one or both races, and also by the fact that "half-breeds" tend to assimilate in the culture to which the majority of the population belongs. In groups, which are quite homogeneous in their assimilation by the culture of the majority, and in which people belonged to certain races, according to the documents compiled from the words of their parents, rather than by their appearance, the correlation between test indicators and the degree of racial mixing was negligible. Dr. the approach is represented by the study of age-related changes in the comparative performance of tests by racial groups. For example, in the United States, a study of black infants and preschool children either did not reveal any mental retardation at all, or revealed only a slight lag behind the norms for white children. However, testing of schoolchildren, carried out in the same regions and at the same time, revealed a noticeable difference in average indicators, which increased over the years. These results are similar to the data obtained for other groups of children who grew up in a limited educational and cultural environment. In this case, the age-related decline in intelligence was attributed to the cumulative effects of the limitations of children's experience and the increasing disparity between the impoverished environment and the expanding intellectual needs of the growing child. Considering this problem from a broader point of view, we can say that such an age-related decrease in indicators relative to test norms occurs in those cases when the test assesses cognitive functions, the development of which is not stimulated in a particular culture or subculture. The third approach is to compare samples of representatives of the same race who grew up in different conditions. As a rule, similar issled. show greater differences in test performance between subgroups of the same race living in different environments than between different racial groups living in more comparable conditions. Several studies have shown that regional differences found within the same racial population are related to the cultural characteristics of these regions rather than to selective migration. Issled. t. n. equated groups of different races usually show a significant reduction in the differences in average IQ values, although some difference still remains. Carrying out similar research. associated with a number of methodological difficulties. One of them is statistical regression to the mean, which appears every time the experiment. a matched-sample experimental design is used in research. populations differing in equating variable, eg. by the socioeconomic level. As a result of this, the differences in average indicators found when comparing the selected samples, for example. IQ are just a statistical artifact of the selection procedure. Dr. the difficulty is associated with the use of very broad categories for the classif. variables such as socioeconomic or educational levels. When dealing with such large categories, there is always the possibility that individuals from one population will be grouped at the lower level within each category, and individuals from another population - at the upper level of the same category, even if the selection was made in such a way that the total number of individuals in all categories was the same. A similar difficulty arises when using such traditional equalizing variables as the profession and education of parents, because the connection of these variables with psychology. the development of the child can be very indirect and distant. There is a growing trend towards the creation of home enviroment scales, which are more detailed and are more directly related to the development of reliably determinable properties such as the ability to learn. The use of such scales for the comparative study of black and white preschoolers and high school students has proven fruitful: there was evidence of the dependence of group differences in intellectual development on the relevant characteristics of the home environment. Based on the knowledge accumulated to date, only a few can be done with certainty. conclusions. First, a biologist. the basis of any observed psychol. racial differences have not yet been established. Secondly, a lot of evidence has been obtained, both from a comparative study of races and from other studies in the field of dialectical science. - the fact that the role of cultural factors in the formation of behavioral differences is mainly revealed when studying different racial groups. Finally, with regard to all psychology. traits and qualities, the range of individual differences within each race significantly exceeds the difference in average values between races. As for group differences in general, we can say that empirically established group differences turn into group stereotypes if: 1) differences in group means are attributed to all members of the group without exception; 2) the observed differences are perceived as rigidly fixed, not amenable to change and inherited. See also Foster children, Genetics of behavior, Gifted and talented children, Heritability, Human intelligence, Individual differences, Psychological assessment, Racial differences, Sex differences A. Anastazi
Differential psychology has changed a lot since Galton founded his Anthropometric Laboratory, a milestone in the study of individual differences.
Currently, this branch of psychology focuses its efforts on determining the relative influences of heredity and environment on behavior.
In this article, we will briefly explain the historical development of differential psychology, describe the goals and methods of this discipline and find out how it differs from personality psychology, and to some extent a very close discipline.
What is Differential Psychology?
Differential psychology (also known as analytical psychology) is a discipline that studies individual differences. This discipline examines the differences that exist between people in the field and personality. The creator of the expression was psychologist William Stern.
The creator of the expression of differential psychology was the psychologist William Stern
His object of study would be the description, prediction and explanation of interpersonal, intergroup and intrapersonal variability in the relevant psychological areas in relation to its origin, manifestation and functioning.
Often opposed to general psychology, which has a lot to do with the study of what exists in humans, is defined as one of the great disciplines in psychology.
General psychology uses an experimental method (hence, it is also known as experimental psychology) based on the ER (stimulus-response) or EOR (Stimulus-Organism-Response) paradigm, while differential psychology mainly uses the correlation method, and is based on the OER paradigm (Organism-Stimulus-Response).
History of differential psychology
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the monk Gregor Mendel conducted the first genetic research. Using peas, Mendel defined the laws of heredity, made advances in the future concept of "gene" and coined the terms "dominant" and "recessive" in relation to the heritability of biological traits.
Several decades later, Francis Galton, a relative of Charles Darwin, pioneered differential psychology and personality through the development of psychometrics. Francis Galton's student and protege, mathematician Carl Pearson, made fundamental contributions to statistics.
The rise of behaviorism influenced the disintegration of differential psychology that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s with the publication of Behavioral Genetics by John Fuller and Bob Thompson. These authors introduced differential discoveries in genetics that explained phenomena such as mutation and polygenic transmission.
Despite advances in differential psychology and behavioral genetics, it is still difficult to separate hereditary and environmental influences when studying human behavior and the mind.
Objectives of this discipline
The main task of differential psychology is to quantitatively investigate behavioral differences between people. Theorists and researchers in this discipline intend to identify the variables that cause and influence behavioral differences.
Differential psychology focuses on three types of variation:
- Interpersonal (differences between one person and the rest)
- Intergroup variables that take into account such as biological sex or socioeconomic status.
- Intrapersonal - compare the behavior of a person. The same person in time or in different contexts.
Despite the fact that differential psychology is often confused with personality psychology, the industry in question explores very different topics:
- intelligence
- motivation
- health
- values
- interests
However, it is true that the contributions of differential psychology to personality and intelligence are known in more detail.
From the very beginning, the psychology of individual difference has been applied in the educational and professional fields, although its usefulness depends on the phenomena investigated. It is also important to mention the usual relationship between differential psychology and eugenics, which aims to “improve” the genetics of populations.
Research methods
Differential psychology uses mainly statistical methods; thus, we work with large samples of subjects and analyze data from a multivariate approach. Thus, elements of experimental control are introduced, which make it possible to establish relationships between variables. The use of observational and experimental methods is widespread.
There are three types of research specific to differential psychology:
- Those that analyze the similarities between family members
- Animal Drawings
- Those who study people in special conditions.
From this latter type we can distinguish studies with adopted children, as well as the famous case of the wild child Aveyron.
Among family studies, studies with monozygous twins stand out because they are genetically identical and therefore differ depending on the environment. However, despite the obvious advantages of this research method, it is difficult to distinguish between the relative influences of a specific and general environment.
Genetic studies in animals can be beneficial because of the high reproduction rates of some species and the ease of experimentation, but they pose ethical problems and the results obtained often cannot be generalized to humans.
What is the difference from personality psychology?
Unlike differential psychology, which is predominantly quantitative in nature, personality psychology focuses its efforts on the causes, characteristics and consequences of interpersonal variability for behavior.
On the other hand, the psychology of individual difference not only analyzes personality but is also interested in other aspects such as intelligence, socioeconomic variables, and certain patterns of behavior, such as criminal behavior.
In terms of methodology, differential psychology is largely based on research that constrains the relative influences of inheritance and environment on certain variables. On the other hand, personality psychology uses mainly correlation and clinical methods. Both emphasize experimental methodology.
In any case, the scope of study of the two disciplines often overlaps. In the area of temperament and character, personality psychology explores many aspects of behavior variation, while differential psychology quantifies them and also refers to other aspects of human nature.
Materials (edit)
American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Arlington: American Psychiatric Publication. pp. 123-154. ISBN 0890425558.
Schmitt A, Malhou B, Hasan A, Falqai P (February 2014). "The influence of environmental factors on severe mental disorders." Front Neurosci 8 (19). DOI: 10.3389 / fnins.2014.00019. PMC 3920481. PMID 24574956.
Hirschfeld, R.M. Vornik, LA (June 2005). Bipolar Disorder - Costs and Comorbidities. American Journal of Managed Nursing 11 (3 Suppl): S85-90. PMID 16097719.
Since there are problems both with the field of definition of differential psychology and with terminology, it seems that it will not be easy to talk about the history of this science.
V prehistory, there are two main streams: characterological and psychognostic.
Characterology is a discipline that reduces differences in the essence of people to certain simple basic types. It proceeds from the belief that the alleged source of individuality is either homogeneous or is a collection of a small number of basic properties - in both cases it must be made intelligible in its essence. Therefore, characterology tries to differentiate the main forms in which these basic properties can appear, and, if possible, to present them in the form of a clearly developed system.
A distinctive feature of characterology up to the present day is a kind of fusion of philosophical hypotheses about the essence and causes of human nature (character, temperament) with empirical research, limited to obtaining data from everyday experience or not always strictly scientific approaches to the consideration of the psyche.
Although the name "characterology" appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, this trend itself is much older.
The most famous example from antiquity related to our topic is Galen's doctrine of temperament, in which four main types of individual identity are derived from the predominance of any one "juice" in the human body.
Galen(129 or 13 1 - about 200 or about 210) - an antique medic. The common spelling of the name as Claudius Galen (lat. Claudius galenus) appears only in the Renaissance and is not recorded in the manuscripts; it is believed that this is an erroneous decoding of the abbreviation Cl(Clarissimus).
Galen was born around 130 A.D. in the city of Pergamum. His father, Nikon, a wealthy man, was a famous architect, well versed in mathematics and philosophy. To give his son the best possible education, he first studied with him himself, and then invited prominent Pergamon scholars.
Galen was preparing to become a philosopher and studied the works of Greek and Roman thinkers. But by chance coincidence, Galen's dream was misinterpreted - and he became a physician, although he continued to be interested in philosophy all his life.
At 21, Galen lost his father. Having received a large inheritance, he went on a seven-year journey. In Smyrna he studied philosophy and anatomy, in Corinth - natural science and the properties of drugs, in Alexandria - again anatomy.
Returning to Pergamum, Galen began to practice surgery, became a doctor at the school of gladiators. This work was for Galen a real school of medical art. He wrote: "I often had to lead the hand of surgeons, little sophisticated in anatomy, and thus save them from public shame."
At the age of 34, Galen moved to Rome, where he received the position of court physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son to the emperor Commodus. He became so famous that coins with his image were put into circulation in Ancient Rome.
In the Temple of Peace, Galen opened a course of lectures on anatomy not only for doctors, but also for everyone. Galen, the first to use vivosection, demonstrated the dissection of dogs, pigs, bears, ruminants, even monkeys. Since the dissection of human bodies was then considered sacrilege, Galen could study human anatomy only on wounded gladiators and executed robbers.
According to sources, Galen lived for 70 years and died around 200 AD. e. According to Arab sources, Galen lived for 80 years and, therefore, his death dates from about 210 BC.
Galen described about 300 human muscles. He proved that not the heart, but the brain and spinal cord are "the focus of movement, sensitivity and mental activity." He concluded that "without a nerve there is not a single part of the body, not a single movement called voluntary, not a single feeling." By cutting the spinal cord across, Galen showed the disappearance of sensitivity in all parts of the body below the incision site. He proved that blood moves through the arteries, and not "pneuma", as previously thought.
He created about 400 works on philosophy, medicine and pharmacology, of which about a hundred have come down to us.
Described the quadruple of the midbrain, seven pairs of cranial nerves, the vagus nerve; conducting experiments on transection of the spinal cord of pigs demonstrated a functional difference between the anterior (motor) and posterior (sensory) roots of the spinal cord.
Based on observations of the absence of blood in the left heart of killed animals and gladiators, as well as the holes in the interventricular septum discovered by him during the anatomy of the corpses of premature infants, he created the first theory of blood circulation in the history of physiology (it was believed, in particular, that arterial and venous blood are liquids different, and since the first "carries movement, warmth and life", then the second is designed to "nourish the organs"), which existed until the discoveries of Vesalius and Harvey.
Galen systematized the concepts of ancient medicine in the form of a single teaching, which was the theoretical basis of medicine until the end of the Middle Ages.
He laid the foundation for pharmacology. Until now, "galenic preparations" are called tinctures and ointments prepared in certain ways.
This direction was widely represented in German educational philosophy and the "psychology of experience" of the 18th century, some of their examples are contained in various sources.
The most famous book is "Anthropology" by I. Kant (1798) - a special part of it ("anthropological characteristics") is devoted to the discussion of problems of character, personality, gender, people and contains physiognomic descriptions, consideration of types of temperaments, types of thinking, etc., made with a delicate taste.
After 70 years, characterology began to systematically address issues.
The little-known work of Banzen (1867), which mentions the name "characterology", contains treasures that deserve attention in our time. He identified three main areas of logical differentiation: temperaments, which refers to purely formal volitional relationships,pozodinika - expressing the measure of the ability to suffer andethics - character in the full sense of the word.
In modern times in Germany there have appeared separate experiments in the field of characterology of Sternberg, Luke, Klages. The French - Malaper, Polan, Foule, Ribery and others - turned to the topic of classification and description of character and temperament.
So let's clarify.
Characterology- the science of characters. The term is a tracing-paper from the German Charakterkunde. Introduced at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, however, attention was paid to the study of characters at an earlier time. A feature of the study of character is that it is often inseparable from the study of temperament and personality as a whole.
The ancient Greek scientist and writer Theophrastus, the author of the work "Characters", is considered the founder of characterology. Theophrastus' treatise contained a description of 31 types, each of which was determined on the basis of the dominance of a particular feature. Since the XIX century. systematic attempts to provide a scientific basis for the differences in human characters begin, various classifications of characters and psychological types appear - L. Klages, K.G. Jung, E. Kretschmer,
A.F. Lazursky and others. Most of these (and earlier) classifications were built on various grounds.
In the USSR in 1920-1930. the doctrine of characters developed mainly within the framework of pedology. In the late 1930s. all of these studies have been phased out. In Soviet psychology, a vulgar interpretation of the thesis of L.S. Vygotsky on the disclosure of individual characteristics through interaction with society: it was generally accepted that character is the result of the influence of society, while only differences at the level of temperament can be considered innate. In the textbook of Kovalev and Myasishchev, which was republished several times, characterology is declared a "bourgeois pseudoscience."
In the 1960s, as interest in the individual characteristics of a person, including constitutional ones, was revived, the emphasis in their study also shifted. We are no longer talking about "characterology", but about differential psychology, in which a distinction is made between mental properties, states and processes (in Western psychology, these concepts are designated as psychological factors, in neuroscience - as mental functions).
Currently, one of the most common methods for classifying characters is a method based on the characteristics of behavior that have formed in a person and differ from the characteristics of some "ideal" behavior, which depends only on external factors. In pathological cases, such "deviations from the ideal" are observed especially clearly, therefore the described types of character are often called terms from psychiatry.
Based on this approach, several types of deviations can be distinguished: asthenic (disorders of the psychasthenic, neurasthenic and sensitive type), dysthymic (disorders of the hyperthymic, hypothymic and cycloid types), sociopathic (disorders of the conformal, non-conformal and paranoid type), "psychopathic" (schizoid , epileptoid and hysteroid disorders).
There is a separate approach (the author's method of V.V. Ponomarenko), which pays more attention to the fact that a character combines several traits that are similar to a particular mental disorder. These groups of traits have a homogeneous origin and are called radicals. Seven main radicals are distinguished: hysteroid, epileptoid, paranoid, emotive, schizoid, hyperthymic and anxious - the “7 radicals” method. A real character is always a mixture of several radicals in one or another proportion to each other, but even a pronounced radical does not mean that a person is sick. Based on these seven radicals, a psychological profile and a psychological portrait are drawn up.
Ideas of characterology are at the heart of psychological testing. Characterology is useful in conflict management and in personnel management.
Differential psychology proper differs from characterology in this way: it chooses its starting point not “from above” (the single essence of the individual), but “from below”, and, proceeding from the multiplicity of phenomena established in the individual, slowly and carefully tries to rise to the unity of individuality - with in this she is not satisfied with a method that is an obscure fusion of philosophical speculation with naive random experience, but seeks to develop a scientific method commensurate with her problems.
Differential psychology, however, should not be expected to recognize characterology as completely redundant and replace it. Rather, the more intuitive manner of examining the characterologist will subsequently be a valuable addition to the analytic research of the psychologist, and, of course, it is still very far from the exact psychological research methodology being transferred to the development of characterological questions themselves.
Of the two main problems of characterology so far only one — the problem of temperament — has tended to become accessible to more precise methods; but the study of the difficult and fundamental problem of character by modern methods is only just beginning.
Psychognosis is another large area that should be considered the preliminary stage of differential psychology. Its task is, on the one hand, to establish relations between certain, externally perceived states or movements of a person, and his individual originality, and on the other hand, to use this revealed connection to interpret the character of a particular individual.
In three directions, psychognosis has acquired the form of fairly formalized systems - these are physiognomy, phrenology and graphology. Along with this, there is a whole series of separate experimental studies.
Physiognomy, or the interpretation of the type of face, in the Middle Ages existed as a form of occult art, but only Lavater (1775)
made it popular; it is known that even the outstanding German writer and scholar Goethe was for some time fascinated by this teaching. True, this wave of popularity lasted only a short time.
In reality, this method was too primitive, and the choice of grounds for interpretation (partly of the bone framework, partly of the soft tissues of the face) was arbitrary enough that, in the end, physiognomy would not quickly lead itself to absurdity. She simplified the matter so much that, not considering it necessary to examine the subject's real face, she turned only to his silhouette.
The second system had a greater impact - phrenology, created around 1810 by Halle and also called cranioscopy. She came up with a completely different scientific toolkit. And although the doctrine that individual psychic abilities are localized in different places of the brain was, at least, a controversial hypothesis, it seemed convincing that the conclusion following from this that the strongest manifestation of any property is accompanied by a particularly strong development of the corresponding part of the brain and expressed in pineal formations or an increase in the surface of the skull. Thus, the bulge of the ridge and the deepening of the skull acquired the meaning of psychognostic signs of predominant or absent properties.
Today we know that some assumptions were only marginally correct, and some interpretations were completely wrong; but despite this, groping skulls have long been considered an excellent means of character determination.
Gall had many followers, some of whom (for example, Spurzheim) worked further on their own.
The third psychognostic system - graphology - creation of the XIX century. Her country of birth is France; it was founded by Abbot Michon (1875) and developed by his successor Krepier-Jamin in the 1880s.
The main idea of graphology is that a person's movements can at least partially be considered forms of expression of his nature, which also applies to movements when writing, therefore, the results of movements when writing (features of the outline of letters and handwriting in general) are applicable as psychognostic means of interpretation. But the number of generally recognized, reliable connections between handwriting features and character traits has not yet been fully studied (although it should be noted that graphology is used quite successfully all over the world in the search for criminals), therefore, individual interpretations of graphologists, even the most authoritative, can still be contain errors and inaccuracies. This area suffers from the fact that, along with serious experiments in scientific generalization (in the person of Preyer, Bussé, Klages, etc.), there is also a large number of artisans and charlatans.
All considered psychognostic systems suffer from two disadvantages:
- one of them situational nature, is determined by their current state and therefore can be overcome in the future;
- another drawback principled nature: it consists in the arbitrary grasping of any one group of symptoms as the only means of cognition. This mistake makes it impossible to transform amateur activities into truly scientific ones.
Differential psychology should strive, in order to understand mental characteristics, to ensure the interaction of all available means of interpretation, therefore, handwriting or facial expression will always be just separate symptoms for it, along with many others, and not isolated explanatory principles.
Along with the two main currents, which were the preparatory stages of science, there are numerous currents of a narrowly specialized nature, which also contribute to the creation of differential psychology.
Numerous works on the hereditary prerequisites of genius and individual geniuses, on the psychology of a woman, a criminal, a race, i.e. research that arose outside the mainstream of the development of psychology. They are created by people of various professions and levels: doctors and artists, amateur specialists and amateurs, and present a very variegated and disordered picture in the methodology, points of view and problem statement. One should hope for their systematization only in the future.
Differential psychology as an offshoot of general psychological science (the categories and types of methods of which were perceived by it, developed further and changed in accordance with new requirements), arose from the end of the 19th century.
Already in the 1980s. Charcot in France and Galton in England founded the doctrine of types of memory and language.
In 1890 in America, D. Cattell first proposed the method of "mental tests", and in 1896 Vine's work "Individual Psychology" appeared - a kind of programmatic work of a new field of science. At the same time, the German psychologist Baerwald published his "theory of giftedness", and in 1890 W. Stern in "The Psychology of Individual Differences" tried to give a summary of the then state of development and encourage scientists to future research in this area of science.
William Lewis Stern (eng. William Lewis Stem; April 29, 1871, Berlin - 1938, Durham, USA) - German psychologist and philosopher, considered one of the pioneers of differential psychology and personality psychology. In addition, he had a great influence on the nascent child psychology. The creator of the concept of intelligence quotient, which later formed the basis of the famous 1Q test by Alfred Binet. Father of the German writer and philosopher Gunther Anders. In 1897, Stern invented a tone variator, which allowed him to significantly expand the possibilities of studying human sound perception.
V. Stern was educated at the University of Berlin, where he studied with the famous psychologist G. Ebbinghaus. After receiving his doctorate, he was invited in 1897. at the University of Breslau, where he worked as a professor of psychology until 1916. Remaining a professor at this university, Stern founded in 1906 in Berlin the Institute of Applied Psychology and at the same time began publishing the Journal of Applied Psychology, in which he, following Mün- Sterberg, develops the concept of psychotechnics. However, he is most interested in research on the mental development of children. Therefore, in 1916, he accepted an offer to succeed the famous child psychologist E. Meiman as head of the psychological laboratory at the University of Hamburg and editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology. At this time, he was also one of the initiators of the organization of the Hamburg Psychological Institute, which was opened in 1919.
In 1933 Stern emigrated to Holland, and in 1934 he moved to the USA, where he was offered a professor position at Duke University, which he held until the end of his life.
Stern was one of the first psychologists to place the analysis of the development of the child's personality at the center of his research interests. The study of an integral personality, the laws of its formation was the goal of the theory of personalism developed by him. This was especially important during that period, i.e. in the tenth years of the XX century, since the research of child development at that time was reduced mainly to the study of the cognitive development of children. Stern also paid attention to these issues, examining the stages of development of thinking and speech. However, from the very beginning, he strove to study not the isolated development of individual cognitive processes, but the formation of an integral structure, the persona of the child.
Stern believed that personality - it is a self-determined, consciously and purposefully acting wholeness with a certain depth (conscious and unconscious layers). He proceeds from the fact that mental development is self-development, self-development of the inclinations of a person, which is directed and determined by the environment in which the child lives. This theory was called the theory of convergence, since it took into account the role of two factors - heredity and environment in mental development. The influence of these two factors is analyzed by Stern using the example of some of the basic activities of children, mainly play. He was the first to single out the content and form of play, proving that the form is unchanging and associated with innate qualities, for the exercise of which the play was created. At the same time, the content is set by the environment, helping the child to understand in what specific activity he can realize the qualities inherent in him. Thus, play serves not only to exercise innate instincts (as the famous psychologist K. Gross believed), but also to socialize children.
Stern understood development itself as growth, differentiation and transformation of mental structures. At the same time, speaking of differentiation, he, like representatives of gestalt psychology, understood development as a transition from vague, indistinct images to clearer, structured and distinct gestalts of the surrounding world. This transition to a clearer and more adequate reflection of the environment goes through several stages, transformations, which are characteristic of all basic mental processes. Mental development tends not only to self-development, but also to self-preservation, i.e. to the preservation of the individual, innate characteristics of each child, first of all, the preservation of the individual rate of development.
Stern is one of the founders of differential psychology, the psychology of individual differences. He argued that there is not only a common normality for all children of a certain age, but also an individual normativeness that characterizes this particular child. He was also one of the initiators of the experimental study of children, testing and, in particular, improved the methods of measuring the intelligence of children proposed by A. Vine, proposing to measure not mental age, but the IQ.
Preservation of individual characteristics is possible due to the fact that the mechanism of mental development is introception, i.e. the child's connection of his internal goals with those that are set by others. Stern believed that the potential of a child at birth is rather vague, he himself is not yet aware of himself and his inclinations. The environment helps the child to become aware of himself, organizes his inner world, giving him a clear, formalized and conscious structure. At the same time, the child tries to take from the environment everything that corresponds to his potential inclinations, putting a barrier in the way of those influences that contradict his internal inclinations. The conflict between the external (environmental pressure) and internal inclinations of the child also has a positive significance for his development, since it is the negative emotions that this discrepancy causes in children that serve as a stimulus for the development of self-awareness. Frustration, delaying introception, makes the child peer into himself and the environment in order to understand what exactly he needs to feel good about himself and what specifically in the environment causes him a negative attitude. Thus, Stern argued that emotions are associated with the assessment of the environment, help the process of socialization of children and the development of reflection in them.
The integrity of development is manifested not only in the fact that emotions and thinking are closely related, but also in the fact that the direction of development of all mental processes is the same - from the periphery to the center. Therefore, first, children develop contemplation (perception), then representation (memory), and then thinking, i.e. from vague ideas, they move on to the knowledge of the essence of the environment.
Stern believed that in the development of speech, a child makes one significant discovery - the discovery of the meaning of a word, the discovery that each object has its own name, which he makes about a year and a half.
This period, which Stern spoke about for the first time, later became the starting point for the study of speech among almost all scientists who dealt with this problem. Having identified 5 main stages in the development of speech in children, Stern not only described them in detail, in fact, having developed the first standards in the development of speech in children under 5 years of age, but also tried to highlight the main trends that determine this development, the main of which is the transition from passive to active speech and from word to sentence. Of great importance was Stern's study of the originality of autistic thinking, its complexity and secondary nature in relation to realistic thinking, as well as his analysis of the role of drawing in the mental development of children. The main thing here is Stern's discovery of the role of schema in helping children move from ideas to concepts. This idea of Stern helped to discover a new form of thinking. - visual-schematic or model thinking, on the basis of which many modern concepts of developing education for children have been developed.
Thus, it can be said without exaggeration that V. Stern influenced almost all areas of child psychology - from the development of cognitive processes to the development of personality, emotions or periodization of child development, as well as the views of many prominent psychologists who dealt with the problems of the development of the child's psyche.
In the first decade of the XX century. these endeavors resulted in a powerfully expanding movement that continues to this day.
In the United States, special committees have been set up to research testing methods and collect data on individual differences. At its convention in 1895, the American Psychological Association formed a committee "... to consider the possibility of collaboration between various psychological laboratories in the collection of mental and physical statistics." The following year, the American Development Association formed a standing committee to organize ethnographic research on the white population of the United States. Cattell, as a member of this committee, noted the importance of including psychological tests in this study and the need to coordinate it with the research work of the American Psychological Association.
The mainstream of research was also the application of newly created tests to various groups.
Kelly in 1903 and Northworth in 1906 compared normal and retarded children on tests for sensorimotor and simple mental functions. Their discoveries shed light on the continuing division of children according to their abilities and made it possible to argue that the weak-minded do not constitute a separate category.
In 1903, Thomson's book "Intellectual Differences of the Sexes" was published, containing the results of various tests of men and women that had been carried out over several years. This was the first comprehensive study of psychological gender differences.
In addition, for the first time, testing was carried out for sensory acuity, motor capabilities and some simple mental processes in representatives of various racial groups. Separate studies appeared even before 1900.
In 1904, Spearman's original article appeared, who put forward his two-factor theory of mental organization and proposed a statistical technique for investigating the problem. This publication opened the field of study of the relationship of qualities, as well as the way for modern factor analysis.
The work of the Soviet psychologist Alexander Fedorovich Lazursky, who is the founder of differential psychology in Russia, was also of great importance for the development of differential psychology. Together with A.P. Nechaev, he created one of the first psychological laboratories in St. Petersburg. Subsequently, Lazursky for many years headed the psychological laboratory at the Psychoneurological Institute. V.M. Ankylosing spondylitis.
In 1897, the journal "Review of Psychiatry" published the first article by Lazursky, devoted to the problem of individual differences, - "The current state of individual psychology." Considering the achievements of this science, he emphasized that its purpose is to study how "the mental properties of different people are modified and what types they create in their combinations."
In his work "Essay on the Science of Characters" (1909), Lazursky developed the original concept of "scientific characterology", which was based on the idea that individual characteristics of a person are associated with the activity of the nervous system. Lazursky's position was in many ways different from the views of Stern, Binet and Galton, since he considered it necessary not to limit himself to applied research and argued the importance of forming the foundations of a scientific theory of individual differences.
The assertion of individual psychology as a theoretical discipline, as Lazursky emphasized, the significance of experience, primarily observation and experiment, the important role of which the scientist wrote about. At the same time, he considered empirical data on the activity of various mental processes not in isolation, but in a system, proving that the main task of experimental research is to build a holistic picture of a person. Based on the inclinations, abilities, temperament and other individual qualities of a person, it is possible to build a complete, natural classification of characters, which, according to Lazursky, will form the basis of a new science. He introduced the concept of endopsychic and exopsychic spheres of mental life, based on the diagnostics of which an individual portrait of a person can be drawn up. A detailed exposition of the main provisions of his characterology and personality typology was given in the book "Classification of Personalities" (1922), published after the death of the scientist.
Another Soviet scientist, B.M. Teplov opened a new chapter in the study of the psychophysical foundations of individual differences.
Based on Pavlov's teachings about the properties of the type of the nervous system, he put forward a large program for diagnosing typological properties. On the basis of this program, a large scientific school was formed differential psychophysiology, the most important contribution of which was the disclosure of the properties of the nervous system inherent in humans, and the development of theoretically grounded and based on an objective methodology for the study of individual psychological differences between people.
The prominent Russian psychologist, Doctor of Psychology V.S. Merlin. He put forward the principle of "multivalued dependence" of mental phenomena on physiological, which made it possible to reveal the complex, mediated nature of the relationship between various levels of organization of individual personality traits - neurodynamic, psychodynamic and personal. Research in this area led him to the creation of the concept of human temperament ("Essay on the theory of temperament", 1964; "Essay on the integral study of individuality", 1986).
Thus, the psychology of individual differences, called differential psychology, began to take shape as an independent branch of science only at the beginning of the 20th century.
The goal of this direction was to create strict standardized methods and procedures for assessing individual psychological differences, mainly in the field of intelligence, on the basis of which it was supposed to conduct preliminary professional selection and individualize the learning process. The main methods of differential psychology, called tests, were created to solve specific practical problems.
The psychology of individual differences in Russia began to be built on special methodological foundations. She dissociated herself, first of all, from testology and focused her main attention on the search for a theoretical concept that could form the basis of scientific differential psychology. In their theoretical searches, psychologists turned to the teachings of I.P. Pavlova on the properties and types of the nervous system. Thus, individual elements of a new scientific direction began to emerge - differential psychophysiology, which initially set as its goal a thorough study of the properties of the human nervous system and the elucidation of their role in the determination of stable individual psychological differences between people.
Analyzing the formation of the psychology of individual differences and its modern level, today it is already possible to combine research carried out in the mainstream of this psychological field into three large groups:
- the first direction is associated with the analysis of the structure of psychological properties. What psychological characteristics make sense to consider as the most important for the psychological appearance of a person and how they are related to each other - these are the main problems that are considered in these studies. In the works of this direction, individual differences appear not only as a subject of research, but also as a condition that makes it possible to use statistical procedures with the help of which the structuring of psychological characteristics is carried out;
- the second direction is associated with the search for the causes of the origin of individual differences in psychological characteristics. The studies of this group are the most numerous and concern the analysis of biological and social determinants of individual differences, the role of heredity and the environment in the formation of such differences, the dynamics of individual differences in the development process;
- the third line of research is the ideographic analysis of individuality. In this case, the object of psychological research is an individual subject, and not a group, as is the case with nomothetic the approach implemented by the first two directions.
The zone of proximal development of differential psychological theory is determined by the nature of the methodological tasks of primary importance. Thus, many researchers note that the development of a program for studying the structure of the human genome is approaching its final stage - the definition of a cause-and-effect relationship between the genetic and psychological level of personality traits.
It is now clear that the differences between people are rooted in the genetic basis of personality. At the present stage, of particular importance is not a simple statement of the fact that there is a connection between a gene and a corresponding behavioral trait, but the identification of the consequences of a certain localization of a gene in the genetic structure. The next step, after the adoption of the position on the relationship between a separate gene in the human brain and individual differences in personality traits, is the position that genetic influence does not determine human behavior, but is expressed in the assumption, confirmed by statistical models, that it is necessary to take this influence into account for a certain spectrum in range of behavioral variability.
On the other hand, the concepts of the genetic determination of personality traits meet experimentally confirmed by social psychologists and interactionistically oriented researchers facts about the power of influence of situational variables on personality behavior. There is a need to integrate the data obtained with respect to different levels of individuality into a single, conceptually and empirically consistent model. It is quite possible that the theoretical basis for the development of such a model will turn out to be a hierarchical approach, considered in the context of the dynamic organization of the processes of functioning of an individual at the “lower” and “upper” levels.
The identification of the real mechanisms that form the differences between people allows us to turn to the nature of the mutual influence of the three most important factors of human life - genetic predisposition, social conditioning and structures of subjective life experience, differentiating and integrating the influence of nature and society in the process of human development.
Formulated in a form convenient for practical use, scientific knowledge about human differences is already becoming the basis for creating, for example, individual and general training programs that allow us to correlate the highest level of skills development with the potential capabilities of the subject; to develop methods of medical, including psychiatric and psychotherapeutic, correction of adverse natural and social influences on individual behavior; finally, for the introduction of preventive diagnostics, which helps to identify in the early stages of the formation of pathological deformations of the character and personality as a whole.
Today it can be said, and not without reason, that more than a hundred years of development of differential psychology became the prologue for the emergence of the integral science of human differences.
Remember:
characterology, psychognosis, character deformation, Galen, Kant, Bansen, pozodinika, Lavater, physiognomy, phrenology, graphology, Gall, Galton, Charcot, Cattel, Stern, Binet, introception, self-development, idiographic approach, nomothetic approach, Teplov, Merlin , differential psychophysiology, endopsychic and exopsychic spheres, Lazursky, Nechaev, Spearman.
Chapter 1 Questions and Assignments
- 1. Name the main directions in the prehistory of differential psychology and describe them.
- 2. What role did physiognomy, phrenology and graphology play in the development of differential psychology?
- 3. Prepare messages about the life and work of V. Stern.
- 4. Tell us about the role of Galen, Kant, Galton, Gall, Bansen and other scientists in the development of differential psychology.
- 5. Prepare reports on the role of Russian psychologists in creating a new branch of psychology.
B. What is the essence of the three main directions in individual psychology?
7. What are ideographic and nomothetic approaches?
- Kant Immanuel (1724-1804) - German philosopher, founder of German classical philosophy, standing on the verge of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
- Gall Franz Josef (1758-1828), Austrian physician, founder of phrenology. The idea of the localization of functions in the brain, contained in this doctrine, turned out to be fruitful. Hall owns anatomical studies of the nervous system, a description of the anatomy of the pyramidal tract in the brain. In his work "Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and in particular the Brain" (1810-1820), Gall summarized the accumulated data in this area.
- Michonne Jean Hippolyte (1807-1881). Collected and cataloged specific features of handwriting and tried to establish strict correspondences
- Charcot Jean Martin (1825-1893) - French psychiatrist, teacher of Sigmund Freud, specialist in neurological diseases, a fundamental doctrine of the psychogenic nature of hysteria. Conducted a large number of clinical studies in the field of psychiatry using hypnosis as the main tool for proving his hypotheses. Founder of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Paris.
- Galton Francis, Sir (1822-1911) - English explorer, geographer, anthropologist and psychologist; founder of differential psychology and psychometrics.
- Kettel James McKinley (1860-1944) - American psychologist, one of the first specialists in experimental psychology in the United States, the first professor of psychology.
- Binet Alfredo (1857-1911) - French psychologist, doctor of medicine and law of the University of Paris, founder of the first laboratory of experimental psychology in France. He strove to establish an objective research method in psychology. He is known, first of all, as the compiler (together with T. Simon in 1905) of the first practical test of intelligence, called the "Binet - Simon mental development scale" (an analogue of the modern IQ test). Later, in 1916, the Binet - Simon scale was revised by L. Theremin into the Stanford - Binet intelligence scale.
- Spearman Charles Edward (1863-1945) - English statistician and psychologist, specialist in experimental psychology, methods of assessment and measurement, theory, history and philosophy of psychology, personality psychology and social psychology.
- Lazursky Alexander Fedorovich (1874-1917) - an outstanding Russian physician psychologist. Was an employee of V.M. Bekhterev, professor of the Pedagogical Academy and the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. He developed the doctrine of personality and types of character ("characterology") based on the separation of two mental spheres: congenital features, to which temperament and character were attributed ("endopsychics"), and evolving throughout life first of all, in the form of relations between personalities and the surrounding world (“exopsychics”). In his classification, he relied on the data on the activity of the nerve centers known by his time. He was one of the first to conduct research on personality in the natural conditions of the subject's activity.
- Nomothetic approach is an approach aimed at identifying general patterns. According to the classification of sciences and methods by G. Rickert, the nomothetic method is opposed to the ideographic method, aimed at revealing its uniqueness in the studied object (the latter, in Rickert's mind, should be used by sciences that study individual, special phenomena, such as history).
Differential psychology is a part of science that deals with identifying and studying the psychological differences of both one person and a certain group of people. As a rule, in the course of research, special attention is paid to the psychological manifestation of people belonging to different age, ethnic and
And although differential psychology as an independent science has emerged quite recently, it is very important. The term was first used in 1900, when Stern developed a concept that defines and explains the differences between individuals and their groups.
This branch of science sets itself two main tasks. First, in the course of research, scientists try to identify individual differences. Secondly, psychologists are faced with the task of explaining the reason for their occurrence and origin.
Differential psychology and the work of Francis Galton... Considering the work of this scientist, one can understand some of the features of differential psychology. During his experiments, most psychologists preferred the study of the general features of humanity. At the same time, Galton was interested in the individual characteristics of each person and the possibility of their heredity. It was during this period that the opinion arose that mental and physical abilities, talent and some non-standard are transmitted genetically from relatives.
That is why he carefully studied his patients, both from a psychological and a physiological point of view. For example, he assessed the level of muscle tone, determined the upper threshold of auditory sensitivity, etc. Then a special test was developed - the subject was asked to create a certain image in his imagination, and then describe in detail all the features. Galton, on the other hand, studied some individual qualities of the image, and also compared the results of the experiment of close relatives, for example, determined the level of similarity of images among brothers and sisters.
It was he who for the first time sent out capacious questionnaires to all scientists in England in order to determine the level of their intelligence and identify the peculiarities of thinking.
Differential psychology and its methods... As in any other science, scientists use a wide variety of them. They can be divided into different groups.